Science is Art is Science

The V-ATPases enzyme is present in every cell of the body, and also in plants and yeast. It has a connection to many diseases, including cancer and Parkinson’s. Upstate biochemist Patricia Kane, PhD, focuses her research on yeast cells.

Kane, a professor who leads Upstate’s department of biochemistry, was recently awarded a four-year, $1.1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to continue her lab’s research into how cells regulate pH.

One of her projects studies how the V-ATPases knows where and how to help cells regulate pH. Kane has shown that the enzyme interacts with lipids at specific locations in the cell, and these interactions can make the enzyme more active at those locations.

“There might be a code for the lipid within the enzyme, and we want to understand that code,” Kane says.